when least tempted by vanity and ambition.  More starving beggars abstain from stealing the crust they crave, than pampered gluttons deny themselves the luxury that kills them.  They that live under the rod, see and dread the hand that holds it; they who riot in earth’s glories, come at last to think they deserve the short-lived distinctions they enjoy.  When thou goest down into the depths of misery, thou hast naught to fear except the anger of God!  It is when raised above others, that thou shouldst tremble most for thine own safety.”

“This is not the manner in which the world is used to reason.”

“Because the world is governed by those whose interest it is to pervert truth to their own objects, and not by those whose duties run hand-in-hand with the right.  But we will say no more of this, lady; here is one that feels too acutely just now to admit truth to be too freely spoken.”

“Dost, feel thyself better, and more able to listen to thy friends, dear Christine?” asked Adelheid, taking the hand of the repudiated and deserted girl with the tenderness of an affectionate sister.

Until now the sufferer had only spoken the few words related, in mild reproof of her mother’s indiscretion.  That little had been uttered with parched lips and a choked voice, while the hue of her features was deadly pale, and her whole countenance betrayed intense mental anguish.  But this display of interest in one of her own years and sex, of whose excellencies she had been accustomed to hear such fervid descriptions from the warm-hearted Sigismund, and of whose sincerity she was assured by the subtle and quick instinct that unites the innocent and young, caused a quick and extreme change in her sensibilities.  The grief which had been struggling and condensed, now flowed more freely from her eyes, and she threw herself, sobbing and weeping, in a paroxysm of gentle, but overwhelming, feeling, on the bosom of this new found friend.  The experienced Marguerite smiled at this manifestation of kindness on the part of Adelheid, though even this expression of satisfaction was austere and regulated in one who had so long stood at bay with the world.  And, after a short pause, she left the room, under the belief that such a communion with a spirit, pure and inexperienced as her own, a communion so unusual to her daughter, would be more likely to produce a happy effect, if left to themselves, than when restrained by her presence.

The two girls wept in common, for a long time after Marguerite had disappeared.  This intercourse, chastened as it was by sorrow, and rendered endearing on the one side by a confiding ingenuousness, and on the other by generous pity, caused both to live in that short period, as it were, months together in a near and dear intimacy.  Confidence is not always the growth of time.  There are minds that meet each other with a species of affinity that resembles the cohesive property of matter, and with a promptitude